


saccharine

by Anonymous



Category: SKAM (Norway)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe, Eating Disorders, F/F, F/M, Implied Relationships, Internal Monologue, Post-Break Up
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-05-13 17:39:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14753360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Noora in October 2016, contemplating and coping with leaving William behind after all the changes.





	1. saccharine

**Author's Note:**

> alpha!Noora has been on my mind for a long time now.

_It had_ _to end. It has been inevitable from the beginning._

 

Noora repeats it like a mantra and splashes water over her hot face. Pulsing, it is, and it matches every other beat in her body. When the cold water hits her flushed cheeks, it’s like putting aloe vera on a sunburn.

 

She takes a napkin from the dispenser. Gently soaks up the water left on her face.

 

Breathes.

 

Seven o’clock, and the flight doesn’t depart for another hour. A morning flight would have been too suspicious, even though all she wanted was to leave as soon as possible. As soon as he’d hung up when she’d told him no way, she wouldn’t.

 

She had wanted to pack her suitcase as soon as the line went dead, and William stopped answering for the night.

 

But this time, it had been the last. She’d waited, bided her time until he left this morning without a word. The silent treatment had echoed like a death spasm of his slipping authority. He’d learnt that silence and leaving conversations unfinished were the only ways to assure she had no control over him.

 

That it was the only way to keep denying what was happening to them.

 

To her.

 

Bunching the napkin in her hand, she opens her eyes. There’s no way you could tell. Her eyes are still as innocent. Light blue and round. The button nose is still cute. Her blonde hair is longer but soft and curling in the absence of its straightening routine. Her jawline has perhaps sharpened, but that’s inconspicuous enough –

 

A door to one of the stalls behind her flies open. A businesswoman walks up to the mirrors and washes her hands with quick movements. Her bracelets reflect the light from the spotlights above, and when she leans in to take some soap, a whiff of the unmistakable gets into Noora’s nose.

 

The woman rearranges her flowing, dark hair into a bun to show off her neck. No hair to hide the scent. She gives Noora a quick look, then leaves, heels clicking against the tiled floor.

 

Noora studies her bitten nails and scuffed nail polish. Ignores the way her vision is narrowing again. Ignores the pulsing that’s worsening by the second. Ignores her own laboured breathing. Ignores all those signs that make it obvious why she shouldn’t be here – and makes everything else impossible to deny.

 

Hands shaking, she searches through the inner pocket of her backpack. Finds and re-applies some lipstick and then exits the omegas’ bathroom in a hurry.

 

It’s not meant for her, after all.

 

Gatwick is bustling as usual, but she does find a seat in one of the coffee shops. The saccharine scent of flavoured lattes and baked goods make all other smells soft. Less intrusive in her sensitive nose.

 

Makes the alphas’ smell less like competition; the omegas’ less like prey.

 

Betas are scentless. Like William.

 

It had begun innocuous enough. Had started with her telling him, no, he’d do as she’d said and nothing else, and him trying to manipulate her into thinking it hadn’t happened.

 

It had worked in the beginning. Then the cracks had started to appear.

 

Suddenly, everything he said with that convincing voice of his seemed illogical. Wrong. Desperate, controlling or flat out mean. Perhaps that was what had been clear to everyone else back home. But now, there was always something on the tip of her tongue that she could counter with.

 

There was no delay, and once she’d said it, he seemed unable to reply. Held down by her voice.

 

So, naturally, it started to unravel.

 

Once he couldn’t keep her in check, couldn’t talk her into traps woven of her own words, couldn’t disarm her with a scowl – they couldn’t stop fighting. As her poise fell into the cavity caused by this, her patience shortened down by the edges each day. As if an exonuclease had been re-activated by this change and had immediately started to cut away at her patience’s coding gene.

 

The silences got longer, and when they ended, it was always to biting comments or a full-blown argument. That, in turn, ended with his silence and refusal to negotiate.

 

And then, later and later nights, hiding from her ability to make him cave, to make him submit, yield and kneel –

 

And this inevitability.

 

She takes a biscotti crumb that’s gotten stuck in the corner of her mouth. Focuses on how the small particle of sugar, salt and denatured albumen fits in the grooves of her fingerprint. Focuses to distract herself from the worst of it

 

Most things – the smells from everywhere, her changing temper, this biologically inherent dominance with which she can make anyone kneel in an instant – that she can deal with. Control is all she’s ever had. Over body, food, self. All this power that is within her now, she’s made a promise to herself not to abuse it but to use it with benevolence.

 

It’s the insistent, incessant, demanding pulsing that she doesn’t know how to deal with. A whiff – that’s all it takes for the red behind her eyelids to ignite, for her veins to come alive, and every part of her that can transform, to do so.

 

To go hard. To swell.

 

Get out of control.

 

William had wanted her to do something about it. Calm it with suppressants. This transformation, this passing rite, is the final product amplified. It’s like the process of getting a new skin, one that’s all shiny and wet, and it takes a while for it to dry into a perfect fit. Half a year, or a whole one. If suppressed, the permanent change won’t be as drastic.  

And this was already too much for him to handle.

Too many opportunities for her to use this power against him, she supposes.

 

And while it felt so good to watch him struggle against her biological imperative, only for her to come out on top, she’s not sure she wants that. She doesn’t want someone who’s unwilling to bend and give in.

 

Unless that someone is an opposite. A whirlwind, honest, understanding and kind – but equal.

 

Departures show the status of the flight to Oslo as it changes to _boarding_. Noora gathers the remaining crumbs on her plate into a small pile. Leaves her tray on the table, before she hitches her backpack onto both shoulders and heads towards the gate.

 

_It had to end. To make space for this beginning._

 


	2. suppressants

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> three weeks later

In the hallway, the floor is old and wooden. The spare mattress is thin, letting cold seep through. Lying on your side hurts. It causes an ache to spread from bony hip throughout her body, making it throb with a steady beat.

 

And that’s the last thing she needs. It’s aching enough as it is.

 

Eskild’s hookup is an alpha with a breathy moan. He’s loud and strong considering the rhythmic thumping and creaking of bed springs from across the flat.

 

She used to find it off-putting. Before she took her belongings, packed a big suitcase and left. Just like she’d done three weeks ago, and reversed the outcome, hit rewind on an old VHS.

 

Now, knowing she has no right, she wants to force the other alpha out.

 

Out of sight, out of mind – out of territory.

 

It’s odd because even though Eskild lacks scent, he’s hers. He lacks scent, but still smells like home, family – pack, she supposes. She’d hugged him when she came home, travel dirty and pulsing from adrenaline and the changes. He’d held her for a long time, grip tight, and the smell alone had made her able to calm down.

 

That and the silent understanding that she’d reveal the actual reason for coming back once things had settled down.

 

It had been a blessing to have him there to catch her.

 

She'd left London in a rush, prepared for an empty flat to catch her breath, only to stumble upon Isak and that boy he’d had with him in the kitchen. Isak. He’s always been hard to read, but she can tell now, nose more sensitive than ever, what it is.

 

The sterile, rubbing alcohol scent of omega suppressants.

 

She can’t tell how long he’s been using them. But the guy was here again, a week ago, and they fucked in her old  – no, Isak’s – room. Eskild wanted to know if they had, gossip aunt that he is, but it wasn’t her place to tell him about their mingled scents.

 

And it was nothing now, anyway. Something had gone to hell, because Isak is pouring out a cloud of insomnia and cloying sadness that makes it hard to breathe through the days. It’s even worse here in the hallway under the old light.

 

Yet, it’s better than being close to that unknown alpha. At least Isak's suffocating sadness doesn’t trigger the psychotic state of neverending pulsing and throbbing throbbing throbbing of her veins like they are alive. There’s probably another name for it, this state, and the UMO site would provide her with the vocabulary – but she can’t.

 

Can’t make herself look it up. Can’t put words on it. Can’t make it real.

 

She closes her eyes, knowing sleep won’t come.

 

It’s not coming for Isak either as he tosses and turns in her old bed. The springs creak as he does. The unknown alpha makes a noise again, there’s a scent of release, she’s irrationally furious – and her cunt is throbbing like an inflamed cut.

 

It’s more rule than the exception these days. This lust, that’s eating her from the inside out. Everything is pulsing at the slightest touch, sound, scent. A fleeting, disgusting thought from the bad part of her brain is that she’d fuck Isak if he’d let her, just on the count of the fact that he’s omega.

 

That’s the point where she’s at; she's suffering a bifurcation of the brain.

 

Late at night, in insomniac throes, the war wages. Suppressants are an apple, William a snake and she’s Eve; naked, wet and vulnerable.

 

The disgusting uncontrolled, impulsive, dirty, horny, hungry brain wants to call Eva. Wants to hear her voice; mumbling, the director’s cut, soothing in her equality. Noora wants to listen to her touch herself, perhaps, hear her breathy moans; imagine her red hair, thick and perfect for grabbing, her soft mouth, her strong thighs with stretch marks on the back of them that feel like small ripples underneath the fingertips. Wants to hold her thighs apart and _satisfy_ like Chris can’t, satisfy her like an equal with mouth lips fingers everything while she’s naked wet and vulnerable too –

 

Noora thrusts her hand inside her panties and heaves a sigh of relief.

 

Eva, who transformed quietly, like the rising of the tide. Eva, who found her footing, at the same time Noora lost her own. Eva, who takes things in its stride now, grounded, despite the changes in her body and mind.

 

Eva, who has a grip. A, if fleeting, partner. Has control. The one that Noora’s losing every night.

 

Scrambling for her phone, legs spread wide to accommodate for this insistent throbbing where she can feel every heartbeat in her clit, she sends a text. It’s past midnight, but if Eva’s awake, she’ll answer.

 

As always, she does.

 

“Hi. Sorry to wake you.”

 

“No, no, you didn’t. I couldn’t sleep either. Are you alright, Noora?”

 

She’s not, but to admit it would be to pull at the loose thread of this ill-fitted sweater, and the world is already an arctic wasteland for women like her. Harsh, glimmering and unforgiving of the sharpness they bring, the submission they crave, the power they have.

 

She should tell Eva. About it all.

 

But she can’t.

 

“I miss him, so much, even though I know, I shouldn’t.”

 

It’s the truth, but not the right one. Still, it hurts to say it. William had been everything. He’d wanted her, despite everything. Despite the food schedule, the fights, the transgenerational dysfunction that nature had unravelled by demethylation of her DNA.

 

It had been new, exciting, pleasurable – until it wasn’t.

 

At first, it didn’t matter that he’d seen her as a conquest. A compressed piece of carbon that he’d found and known to be different and valuable on sight. Something to be worn down into a jewel to fit in a ring: ruined of its potential, and ultimately useless because of it. He couldn’t handle it when she turned into a saw blade.

 

One made to cut through everything. A Lillith, not an Eve. That is what keeps her floating.

 

“He meant a lot to you. It’s alright to miss that, you know. Even if you can’t be together anymore.”

 

“We could have been. Together, that is.”

 

In her room, Isak turns over again, aggression behind the movement. Radiators snap. Laughter comes from Eskild’s room.

 

“So why did you leave? If you believed that?”

 

Eva’s voice is diplomatic, non-judgemental and Noora loves her. The lack of control and the courage is the missing piece. She needs time to find it all again, to be able to start from the beginning.

 

“Because no one’s prepared to sacrifice anything for love in 2016.”

 

And she can’t sacrifice that.

  


 


	3. starvation

It started weeks ago, but it's not apparent before it's too late. As with everything. 

 

First to go: the schedule. Five o'clock isn't a time to consider anymore. Instead, she goes for a two hour walk. To the harbour, to the church and the woods and back again, arms two pendulums by her sides. 

 

Always keep moving, always keep busy, don't stop until you're shaking. 

 

Second to go: lunch. Forget it once, forget it twice, and third day in a row she isn’t missing it, hunger no longer a sensation but rather another discomfort to endure. 

 

Then, it’s just never the right time to eat breakfast.

 

It’s never the right time. At first that time is six a.m., but then she sleeps through it, on purpose or not doesn't matter. 

 

At seven a.m. it’s too late. 

 

At nine, between French and Norwegian, she eats a carrot, peeled. Tries not to feel guilty about it.

 

Guilty about ruining it all, the work she's put in over the last five years. Guilty about letting the old rules slot into place, one by one, like cogs in an old wind-up toy. 

 

But the clean, airy feeling in her body is like heroin. When she’s empty, a husk, it is so because she made it so. Scraped clean of everything from the inside out. A black hole. Indestructible. Invincible.

 

And most importantly: clean, and in control.

 

If a bit cold and tired and lightheaded. It is so because she made it so. 

 

She can survive on air and water, a being unbound by selfish, carnal urges. 

 

Unruled.

 

She's free. 

 

Her cramping insides remind her that's she's doing well, the cold pulls her into its comforting arms. Her shaking hands, the flaking nails, the sour kind of hurt in the back of her throat that only goes away when she brushes her teeth, careful not to swallow the sweet toothpaste, is more of a nuisance than a worry. Just like the black edges of her vision when she stands up, and the cold cold cold.

 

It's a price she's willing to pay. 

 

All of it keeps the pulsing in check. If her body is weak, running on reserves, it means there’s not enough energy left for the urges to run amok in her body. If she keeps it on the very edge of what it needs, it won’t have the resources to make her a horny disgusting beast who thinks about nothing but omegas and sex sex sex sex _sex_  – 

 

Never mind that the closest omega is _Isak_ of all people. Isak, who's still mourning that boy,  whatever class he was, even though it seems to be a less corrosive pain by now.

 

Had she been normal in the head, she’d never even consider it. 

 

And Eva is not hers to have. There's such a thing as being too much alike. 

 

Insomnia invades her mind, just like the last time she felt out of her depth, toes reaching for the bottom to keep her head above water. She's exhausted, but sleep won't come.The world is spinning when she opens her eyes. When she closes them. Opens them. Closes them.

 

The darkness of the living room changes shape every time she blinks. There's a storm outside. 

 

Inside her bones, somewhere in the marrow, the itchy restlessness picks up its head, sniffs the air, tells her it's time to go for a walk. On a fundamental level, it wants her to feed: to search, gather some berries – 

 

Or hunt. 

 

Tossing the duvet to the side, Noora puts on yoga pants, two shirts and heads out into the night. 

 

Rain comes down slantways, whipping her in the face. Neon and street lights refract in the shallow puddles. Had this been a year ago, she would have been scared. It's four a.m. after all. She would have been afraid a male alpha or beta would look at her and see easy prey; unaccompanied omega or beta female unable to order them into place, biological imperative written into the code for each and every protein. 

 

It's forgotten now. 

 

Arms swinging, head held high, breath like smoke, she walks past a pack, so focused on burning calories that she doesn't realise what it is before it's too late. 

 

She can tell they're all men. There's a scent of cigarettes and some other type of smoke, of sharp aftershave in her sensitive nose, and she knows one of them is a beta. 

 

Noora marches on. 

 

“Hey! Gorgeous, wait up!” 

 

Her legs are shaking now, the muscles starved of the ATP and calcium they need for the trypomysin to lift from the actin, allowing the myosin to attach and release and make her move forward, one sliding filament at a time. All the fuel has been used up over three hours of walking fast, feet a thump thump thump against the pavement. 

 

She's in ketosis; acetone breath and all. 

 

There's no way she'll be able to outrun them. 

 

Another breath, and the fear is paralyzing. She's frozen in place, flipping through solutions as her body stops, unable to do two things at once, brain so starved it's not functioning like it should. 

 

Acetone breaths choke her like petrol fumes – then it breaks through. 

 

She turns around, suddenly throbbing, wet and pulsing pulsing pulsing between her legs, fear washing out with the rainwater down the drain. 

 

“Yes?”

 

The beta is looking at her, smirking, before he meets her eyes. It's only for a split second, but the fear and shock he keeps off his face, sublimates into gas, finds a way into her nose.

 

The rush is indescribable, and she soakes through her underwear, the yoga pants, everything.The pulsing defeats her, floods her like a wave. Just like the pangs of desperate, near irresistible hunger that always come around on the third day. 

 

Even her eyes are throbbing. 

 

“You dropped this.” 

 

Her wallet. She takes it, never breaking eye-contact, trying not to think about the fact that there's copper wire in her veins now, currents zapping along them like insects, charging her voice box and cunt alike. 

 

He's already turned around to go join his pack, when the words break loose from where she has wound them around her teeth. 

 

“Thank you,” she says, with a voice no one but William has ever heard. 

 

The beta turns his head. “No worries,” he says, nodding once. “Alpha.” 

 


	4. scents

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> there's a tag warning for eating disorders, but it applies especially for this chapter. tread with caution.
> 
> more detailed warning in endnotes.

They have to get a thicker rug.

 

Pushing herself up once again she ignores the way her coccyx aches, curling up from the floor for the umpteenth time. She’s been at it for a while, just to get her mind to quiet down. Eskild – it has to be Eskild, neither Isak nor Linn would never be up at this hour – is bustling around in the kitchen, the sizzling and the scents filter out like smoke through a screen, seeping into everything, messing it up.

 

Crunches help. They concentrate everything, make every sensation, feeling and fleeting thought redirect to the muscles just below her ribs; makes them burn away like raindrops on a hot tin roof. They don't linger. Not the way the ache of her spine does. Just three weeks ago, it didn't protrude this much; doing crunches didn't make it go numb. Lying on her side didn’t make her hip ache. The thought of sending Eva a text didn’t make her heart clench.

 

Lots of things didn't hurt. Now, they're just there; small, sparkling reminders that this isn’t sustainable.

 

But stopping just _isn’t_ an option.

 

When she reaches the magic number, she lets her body sprawl on the rug, ribcage heaving, abs aching as the blood rushes back in. In increments, other things filter in too. The sizzling of the saucepan. The fluttering in her ears. The dryness of her mouth. The rumbling of her stomach. The throbbing of her cunt.

 

The pulsating, never-ending need for release.

 

She rolls over to her stomach and draws in a breath of dust and rug and cold floor. Lingers for a moment. Pushes herself up into downward facing dog. Holds the pose, counts to twenty, tries to get her traitorous, primitive body to comply before standing up straight. Her vision narrows down for just a second, black edges creeping in before they retreat again, like the roll of a wave.

 

Taking a breath, the urge prickling under her skin, she steels herself and heads towards the bathroom.

 

But passing by the kitchen, she stops.

 

By the stove, back towards her, shoulder blades moving under thin fabric as he’s flipping something over in a pan, is not Eskild, but a stranger. Older. Omega. Perhaps one of Eskild’s friends. It’s hard to tell; the scents are too overwhelming, nearly bringing her to her knees.

 

There’s food. An abundance of warm, wonderful food. Fried tomatoes, onions and small mushrooms. Scrambled eggs, bread, butter –

 

Her hand takes a white-knuckled grip around the doorjamb. Nostrils flaring, there’s burning behind her eyes as the last scent, the most tantalizing one, enters the mix; explains it all.

 

He turns his head, still not having noticed her. Suddenly, Noora recognizes him; he’s Isak’s boy. The movement of his head makes the air move towards her, the amplified scent of satisfied omega in her territory, burning in her nose like petrol fumes.

 

It hurts, dripping like hot wax down the insides of her already shaking thighs.

 

The psychodynamic perspective claims that anxiety is the product of failure. That it’s the result of failing to converge the wants of id, ego and superego into one. Claims that the jarring sensation, the quickening of the pulse, the shortness of breath, are all the manifestation of being pulled in three separate directions at the same time.

 

And this is worse than anything she’s ever felt. Worse than William’s silence, or leaving him behind. Worse than the stress of losing sleep for the third night in a row. Worse than the burning self-loathing after a session of purging: the stench of vomit, bile and old pipes forever burned into her memory, snot and tears and nosebleed mixing with the saliva strings from her mouth, fingers still scratching and slipping against her epiglottis  –

 

This has to be the mental equivalent of being ripped apart.

 

Suddenly, there’s a sensation of physical pain too, sharp and stinging. Mouth filling with the taste of blood; the nauseating taste of copper, that’s really the iron bound to the haemoglobin, water, salt and proteins being pushed out of the broken capillary wall. Releasing her lip from between her teeth, one part of her wants nothing more than for him to turn around and discover her.

 

She wants to eject herself from this equation, doesn’t want to be the initializing force.

 

If he’s the one who turns, she goes free.

 

It’s too much responsibility. And she’s tired, so very tired, of constantly holding everything back, of constantly being on the brink of an explosion.

 

Yet something needs to happen: the stalemate must be broken. Her thighs are trembling with barely withheld tension. Her stomach is twisting and cramping, her mouth watering, her cunt throbbing harder and harder and she’s not in control of anything anymore. The thread, her sweater, her armour, is being unravelled as she sways, here, in the doorway, cannibalising on her own flesh not to succumb to the urges.

 

The scents.

 

Inhale: through the mouth. Exhale: through the nose. Disperse the intensity of it all to keep it under wraps.

 

Rubberband one second away from snapping – she would’ve done something, something terrible, awful, she knows it, she’s nothing more than a bundle of instincts at this point – is when he turns around.

 

“Oh! Hi, I didn’t see you there.” Not losing a beat, he smiles; a blinding thing. “Good morning. Hope you don’t mind me using the kitchen. I’m Even,” he says, reaching out his hand for her to take.

 

His hand is big, and his skin looks smooth, speckled with birthmarks – and Noora wishes he was Eva. Doesn’t really want this omega boy, who’s cooking food in her kitchen and belongs to Isak, omega himself. It explains so much, confirms what Eva said that time, that Isak never seemed interested in anything but betas: the neutral middle ground, the safe class, the ever-accepted choice.

 

She didn’t either – content with knowing William wanted her, despite everything.

 

Until he didn’t.

 

She wonders if Isak had known. If he’s taken his suppressants since the beginning, nevermind that it has left his scent similar to that of rubbing alcohol, if he’s taken them since he’d known what was happening to him. Dutifully, to be so – scentless.

 

But. It’s so very different for omegas, after all. She’d know. Swallowing, she pushes the pathetic, jealous tears down, knowing she has no right to feel sorry for herself. Has no right to feel anything at all, except for self-inflicted hunger.

 

Over that, she’s at least got control.

 

She takes a breath and takes his hand.

 

“Noora.”

 

“Noora, you can just grab a plate. There’s plenty to go around,” Even says, going back to whatever it is that he’s flipping in the pan. 

 

Everything is still swirling. Waves crashing against the cliffs in her mind, eroding them down.

 

“I’m good.“

 

“You smell really stressed out!” He laughs, and snaps his fingers, winking. “There’s enough food, I promise. Just have some.”

 

She closes her eyes. Opens them.  “I – I was just going to the bathroom, really.”

 

“Don’t worry about it. It can be kind of hard, I’ve heard. Especially when you’re not on suppressants. Food helps though. Just eat.”

 

He waves the spatula in a little circle, then turns back to the stove. She stares at the back of this – stranger’s head. Stares at the lock of hair at the nape of his neck. The way he said it. With a shrug. Nothing else. Like it’s no matter; her alphadom, it’s just a thing in the family of things.

 

No big deal. Food helps.

 

_Just eat._

 

She swallows. Wipes the sleeve of her sweater under her nose, ignoring that it comes away with a mark darker than the rest. Then she steps behind him, nevermind that it’s still slick and sliding, wet and throbbing between her legs. She grabs a plate to fill it up, hands shaking, eyes burning, but needing something to do to keep this shaky, trembling hold of control.

 

Her mind grapples for the one safe harbour there is: counting.

 

The world narrows down.

 

One slice of bread is at least hundred if not more, plus the eggs that make seventy-eight for one make it three just to be sure and the cheese that’s a three hundred fifty a portion at least how much is that plus butter that’s seven hundred fifty per one hundred grams perhaps throw it up later but purging only gets rid of eighty per cent at best and it hurts it’s heaving and hurting for hours it hurts so much but this food it’ll taste so good it might be worth it but might lose control and binge binge binge not worth it so paprikas are thirty-seven and if whole tomatoes are twenty-two one half is eleven but then it's nine a gram for the oil and how much did he use how much –

 

“Good morning, sunshine – oh _hello_ , what is all this?

 

Suddenly, there is Eskild. In the doorway, silk robe and all, staring at Even in delight. Noora looks up at him, and her face has always been an open book to him, no matter what she said, what she tried to do. He takes his eyes off of Even, who’s still smiling, but a bit more unsure now, and he looks at Noora.

 

Looks at the plate in her hand, empty still, the white-knuckled grip she has on it.

 

She meets his eyes, wonders if he can see the screaming. He knows something’s wrong. Has known for a while now. She knows that. And he’s perceptive as they come.

 

It had to end. It has been inevitable from the start. 

 

“Oh, honey.” Eskild says, voice quiet.

 

And then, she’s in his comforting arms, his beta scent, and she’s still throbbing and pouring out pheromones like a chimney –

 

But finally safe.

 

“Baby girl,” he says, petting her hair, and Noora just and finally _cries_ , plate clattering to the floor as her stomach lets out a forty-eight-hour howl, inhuman and lonely like a wolf.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: graphic depictions and imaging of eating disorder behaviours like purging, calorie counting and compulsive exercise.


End file.
